


A Fairy Tale Romance (With Two Kisses).

by NightsMistress



Category: Magids Series - Diana Wynne Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem with Sixteenth Birthdays, as Nick Mallory finds out, is that they are often the heralds for Great Adventure.</p><p>Unfortunately, the adventure wasn't for him, but to find him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fairy Tale Romance (With Two Kisses).

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FiKate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiKate/gifts).



_Nick_

I’m not certain how I should write this report. Everyone I’ve asked has all kinds of suggestions, but none of them seem really right for what this report is about, so I’ve decided to do what I think is best. I’ll start from the beginning, and write until I stop. Roddy said she would cover the parts about her, of course, but given that ultimately it is all my fault, it’s best that I start it off.

The difficulty is working out where this all started. Unlike in computer games, where there’s a clear Event that starts off the protagonist’s journey, there wasn’t really one for this. After raising the dragon, I spent a month with Maxwell Hyde (I still can’t not use his full name; it just seems complete and correct that you do) and then I returned home with Dad. And then … nothing happened. I went to school and pretended that I was interested in things like arithmetic and literature and the chemical processes behind titration. I went out with my friends and was interested in things like dancing, drinking and dating. I even spent time looking after Dad to make sure that he was okay. He never did get around to remembering where he kept his key.

But through all of this, there was a sense that this was not where I should be. It was very peculiar, because for most of my life I didn’t have any kind of sense of where I should or shouldn’t be at all. People like my sister Maree, she’s always had a arrow pointing at her back, propelling her forward towards Her Place In Things. I admired it, in the same way that you admire anything that is beautiful and dangerous -- it’s nice to look at, but you dare not get too close or that purpose will cut you with its edges. Perhaps if I had spoken with Maree about it, things might have been very different.

It was a thoroughly unpleasant sensation, much like a forming zit. At first, it’s tender and uncomfortable, and you’re not sure which way it will go but you keep poking at it to see if you can work it out. As it gets bigger and shinier, you are convinced that everyone can see it, and you just keep poking it more, trying to bring it to to a head. Finally, you’re able to squeeze it: there’s a moment of satisfaction when you hit the mirror and then you realize that you have to clean the mirror, there’s a new sore on your face and if you had only left it alone things might have been better.

I’m afraid to say that Dad was my mirror.

We’d been having arguments for a while, all over stupid things though they didn’t seem stupid when I was yelling back at him. I didn’t want to clean my room _right then_ , and he wanted me to have cleaned it two days ago; my friends were a bad influence on me and I should stop hanging around people who drunk and danced and tried to date girls rather than focusing on their school work; I should be considering my A Levels and what it is I mean to do with my life … and all the while I had this pressure building up that, despite my efforts, I couldn’t release. Until finally, I exploded.

It was another stupid, _stupid_ argument about something pointless, this time that I hadn’t put the rubbish out. At the time it had slipped my mind with the easy to apply grease of ‘I’ll do it later’; after all, it was my birthday coming up in a couple of days and I had been hinting to my friends just what I wanted done for it. Taking the rubbish out would only take a few minutes, and ensuring that my birthday was how I wanted it to be was far more pressing, so I kept talking to my friends instead, until finally the rubbish truck came past and our rubbish wasn’t in it. Dad was red faced with fury, the rubbish sat there unhelpfully and there was something inside me winding me tighter and tighter until I thought I might break from it.

And then he said it. “You have to start thinking about other people for a change, otherwise you’ll end up just like your mother!”

We don’t talk about my mother. Not _ever_.

Dad went pale once his brain caught up with his words. “Nick,” he said. I suppose it was an entreaty. I couldn’t say with certainty, because all I could hear was my heart thumping in my ears, and it was like Mini was sitting on my chest. I know I’m selfish, possibly the most selfish person on the planet, but I _try_ to be better. Part of it is to do with my mother. I thought I had been doing really well of late and having Dad say otherwise ripped the ground out from under me.

It was then that I made a wish; a fierce, angry wish powered by the hurt and outrage that Dad’s comment caused and the furious desire that I hurt him as much as he hurt me. I’d made wishes in the past like this, but none of them did anything. But this time, with that strange pressure building up inside me, I wished to be somewhere else and it happened. I had time to see Dad’s expression begin to shift from sick guilt to horror, and then I disappeared.

I’ve travelled between worlds in the past. I meant to learn from whoever would teach me how to trigger it in a way that I chose, rather than having to use others, but I hadn’t. Even so, when my journeys took me between the worlds, once I was moving it was entirely up to me where I went. I propelled myself, and set my own pace. This was nothing like that at all. It was a whirlwind sweeping through, going where it willed, and all I could do was hold on as best I could and hope that whatever made me Nick Mallory would still be with me when we ended up where we were going. It was extremely unpleasant.

Finally, we arrived at a glen that looked more like it belonged in a Disney movie than the destination point of a travelling spell brought about by one furious wish. I wasn’t really paying attention to it other than to notice the obvious parts -- trees, grass -- as I was caught between two conflicting, and equally pressing, urges to throw up or lie down until everything stopped spinning. I resolved the conflict by doing both: I fell to my knees and threw up until I saw black spots and all that came up was bile, and then I crawled backwards away from where I had been sick until my elbows couldn’t hold me up anymore and spilled me onto the ground. Once there, it felt perfectly natural to close my eyes.

_Roddy_

It all began when Granddad Hyde came into the room, after being away for a week, to declare “Well, young Arianrhod. Your boyfriend’s gone missing.”

I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about at first. Training as the next Lady of Governance meant that, even if I were interested in any boys, I simply didn’t have the time. Further, I didn’t _have_ any interest. Oh, I’m sure that if the right person had come along I might be interested, but they hadn’t and besides, there was far more important things to be doing.

Then I caught his meaning and gave him a glare, in part for using my full name and in part for calling Nick Mallory my boyfriend.

“You’re too serious,” he said. “Though, you could do worse than him.”

“That doesn’t mean that I _should_ ,” I replied, and then wondered why I was being so snippy with him. It was probably how he called me serious, as if it was something to be ashamed of. I knew it wasn’t, _he_ knew it wasn’t, and yet he also knew that if he used it to needle me I would react. It was ultimately my own fault for reacting, especially given that I was Court trained.

“How do you know he’s gone missing?” I asked instead. Nick, after all, lived in a Naywards world, where the King stayed in one place and their Merlin died a long time ago. It sounded depressing, and I wasn’t sure why Granddad Hyde liked spending any time there at all. “He might have wandered off.” If there was one constant in this universe, it was that Nick Mallory would do what was best for him.

“I doubt that, my girl,” Granddad Hyde replied. “There’s just too many coincidences. A potential heir to an empire, disappearing a few days before his sixteenth birthday?”

I didn’t know that Nick was sixteen. I thought he was older than that. It must be the height; he was a tall boy when I first met him although he had that unfinished look that suggested he needed to grow a little more to fit into his neck and wrists.

“His refusing training to help his father wasn’t what anyone expected. Except for Upstairs, of course, they always expect that sort of thing. And, strangely, Rupert Venables. Nice lad, Rupert, if a bit serious. But that kind of selflessness, an untrained magical gift and a lot of Unfinished Business … far, far too many coincidences.”

I thought Nick’s refusing to learn any more magic had more to do with the terrible spell he’d had following raising the dragon over a year ago, and had more to do with fear than self-sacrifice. In fact, this might be the first time that I’d ever heard anyone call Nick Mallory _selfless_. If there was anyone with an abundance of self and the awareness that goes with it, it’s him.

“Well, there’s nothing for it,” Granddad said finally. “You’ll have to go off and fetch him.”

My immediate thought was to say _No_. I was far too busy with my own work, and besides there were Magids around for whom this was their responsibility. But I quashed that urge quickly. There may be Magids in all the worlds, but I was the mage being asked.

“Well, all right,” I agreed. “Something has to be done about all this.”

That was how I ended up kneeling on the ground, flowers in hand, as I tried to work out just where Nick had gone. The path that he had taken was clearly visible, which was both good in that I was able to follow it as easily as following the passage of a knife in a smoky room. It was also _bad_ because when it dropped out, there were a number of places he could have ended up. I sat back on my heels and considered my options. It felt like something was intended, or even _Intended_ , to use Granddad’s word. As such, I closed my eyes and listened, then chose one world in particular before heading back to find where Granddad had gone.

Romanov was there, talking to Granddad. I wasn’t sure how that happened given that the last I heard he was on his island, but as Romanov is a fantastic wizard, he might have crossed over to Blest when I was off trying to divine Nick’s path.

“That boy’s gone and ruined all of my work! I was tracking someone when he whips through, completely out of control, and upsets all of my divination! He’s a _menace_.” Romanov sounded angry.

“If you had sent the boy instructions when he left a year ago, rather than throw a temper tantrum when he refused to stay with you, then perhaps he would have known enough to take care of himself.” Granddad Hyde, on the other hand, sounded utterly relentless. You see, my grandfather can be something of a bully when he sets his mind to it, and Romanov, for all of his flaws, is quite adept at walking between worlds, which we sorely needed to find Nick. For one, I don’t think mum and dad have enough alcohol around for Granddad Hyde to get sufficiently drunk, and I was still learning how to use this queer magic I was bequeathed. “I’ll pay you if I must, but don’t you think this is your own mistake?”

Romanov growled at this, which meant that it must be true.

“Ah, Roddy,” Granddad Hyde said. I stepped out from where I was hiding, thankful that years at Court meant that my face didn’t betray my embarrassment. Still, judging by the way Granddad Hyde Looked at me, it must have been clear. “You know where to go?”

“I do. Is Romanov taking me?” It feels strange, speaking about Grundo’s father like this -- though I should call him Ambrose and not Grundo, as he’s grown into his name as he shot up in height over the last few months, and has insisted that we call him by his name -- but he’s been absent for so long of Grundo - _Ambrose_ ’s life that it seems hardly fair or reasonable to refer to him as a parent.

“Only as a favor to Ambrose,” Romanov said, with very little grace. I wasn’t impressed. Still, travelling with Romanov would be interesting, and I could ask him how Gru-- _Ambrose_ was doing, along with Alicia. She’d resurfaced from underground a few weeks ago and was very changed. I might almost like her now that her attitude’s been rubbed off by a year at a Little Person court.

“That’s fine,” I said. “Only, we better be quick about this, as I have some work to do for Miss Candace afterward.” Romanov gave me a Look that I couldn’t quite interpret, but took me through.

_Nick_

The strange part of dreaming is that normally it doesn’t _seem_ like a dream. You dream of flying and it seems perfectly natural and normal that one would be able to fly when normally you know better, or that you’re doing an exam and only realize halfway through that you’re naked, when you know that if you tried that while awake then you wouldn’t even get out the door before realizing it.

So this dream wasn’t anything like that at all. I dreamed, but I _knew_ it was a dream, and was very put out about how this knowledge meant that I still had a thumping headache.

That didn’t make the dream any less unsettling.

I was in a castle, but one that was utterly silent. Normally when you say something is silent, what you mean is that there’s no human voices around, and if you listen closely there’s the sounds of insects or birds or the wind. That wasn’t the case here. It was _silent_ , and it was _still_. The only noises were those of my breathing and the sounds of sneakers against stone as I wandered the corridors.

To be honest, at first I thought I had been cast into a horror story, one where the protagonist wanders around alone until they died of thirst and then became a ghost. It didn’t help when I entered the first room by trying to push the door open, only for my hand, and then my body, to phase through the door.

The first room had two men cooking something, frozen in mid movement. I don’t mean that to say they had froze at the shock of seeing someone walk through a door -- though I couldn’t blame them if they had under normal circumstances -- but as if someone had pressed the pause button on a DVD player. Salt from a shaker held in one man’s hand was suspended in mid air, hovering a few inches above a saucepan. He was turned to his partner, who might be his apprentice, I wasn’t sure, and his expression was clearly that of someone displeased at a turn of events.

I felt as if I was intruding. No, I _knew_ I was intruding, and the fact that I was doing it accidentally did not make it any better. “Sorry,” I muttered, stepping backwards through the door and continued wandering the corridors.

The second room I entered wasn’t a lot better, only this time I knew that I would be interrupting someone in the middle of their lives who couldn’t see or hear me. This one was something like a school, with half a dozen kids who looked like they were in the first year of secondary school, all looking about as attentive as most kids are at school. Their teacher, a young woman that looked a few years older than me, looked utterly exasperated at one student, whose angelic look clearly meant he had been up to no good. I glanced at the map on the wall to see if it would help tell me where I was, but all it told me was where I _wasn’t_ , which was ‘a place I had been to before’.

The third room I entered was the one that was the most helpful. I guess that makes sense, things done in threes often are. This time it was a library, with an older woman with a no-nonsense air that I liked immediately sitting at a table writing in a book. I know that it was terribly rude of me to do this, but I had to see what she was writing, so I walked over and read over her shoulder.

_To Nichothodes Koryfoides_

I can tell you I didn’t expect that. You see, my full name is Nichothodes Euthandor Timosus Benigedy Koryfoides, and I was saddled with that mouthful of a name because I was a potential heir to the Koryfonic Empire. Was, because I had abdicated out of the line of succession some time ago to let its true leader take over and because I wanted nothing to do with ruling an empire. I’ve been Nick Mallory for as long as I can remember, partly because spelling that mess of names was difficult when I was little, and then after everything that happened with my mother, I quite liked the name Dad gave me.

Still, Nichothodes Koryfoides _is_ my real name, and to have a woman using it on a world that I’ve never travelled to using it in a note to me was very strange. She must have been a very powerful mage to be able to write a note to me, using a name that only a handful of people even know when I certainly never told her it.

_To Nichothodes Koryfoides  
If you are reading this, then our situation has become very dire. We need someone to wake up our Crown Princess, and my visions tell me that you are integral to doing that. She is on the top floor, on the second corridor._

And then, as an afterthought: _Please._

I’m ashamed to admit that my first thought was ‘well, what’s in it for _me_?’. I did say I was selfish, didn’t I? After all, my selfishness was why I was here in the first place, and if I can’t be honest here, in a report that no one will ever read, then where can I be?

So I admit it. I did think ‘Well, why should I? I’m not convinced you didn’t drag me all the way over here and maybe it’s all your own fault anyway!’.

But I decided that wasn’t fair. She didn’t seem the type. I’d met a lot of self-centred people and I like to think I’ve gotten good at identifying one at a glance. She just didn’t seem like that kind of person at all.

“Fine,” I said aloud. “Second corridor. Top floor. All right then.”

_Roddy_

We arrived to a welcoming party of seven dwarfs, a number of animals frozen in mid flight, and the most peculiar feeling of being suspended in a moment of time.

Romanov rolled his eyes in disgust, muttering “Dwarfs! Just what we need!” but I thought I knew better.

“Two more?” the tallest one said, elbowing the one standing next to him. “You did your spell better than you should have!” That one elbowed him back.

“Spell?” I asked. “What spell?”

The explanation took a very long time, so I’ll summarise it for you.

It seemed that there was some kind of stasis enchantment over the entire Kingdom, which in its way made a great deal of sense and explained the unsettling sensation of being suspended in amber. Apparently there was a crown princess who had been given the usual magical gifts at her christening: beauty, grace, poise, intelligence, wisdom and an enchanted sleep at sixteen until she is kissed by the person of her dreams. Normally there are committees dedicated to resolving this kind of thing, ensuring that while a princess falls under the spell, it is only to last for one night.

Unfortunately, Crown Princess Tellabeth was proving to be far more difficult, and finding the person of her dreams was surprisingly difficult. Normally it’s simply true love’s first kiss, or even just the kiss of that boy you might like and have met twice in your life as opposed to that odious prince from the kingdom next door, and as such ‘person of her dreams’ was unusual. It then became particularly important, and so her Kingdom fell into a sleep for a few months. However, before she succumbed, the Crown Wizard (who was, by all accounts, a gifted seer) had known that their salvation would come from outside their world, and so had tasked the Dwarf wizards with casting a spell that would look for a person outside of their own world who was a Prince without any prior engagements to free their princess. I’d been puzzled for a minute as to why it picked up Nick, until I remembered that he was related to some Emperor somewhere. It wasn’t anywhere I had heard of, and Nick seemed the most unlikely heir imaginable, so it had slipped my mind.

“Right,” I said at the end of all that. “But he hasn’t done what he should have, has he?” I sighed. “You’d better show me where you have him stashed away.”

As it turned out, they had just left Nick where they had found him. I suppose it made sense; the only people unaffected by the stasis spell that I had seen thus far were Romanov, the dwarves and I, and _no one_ has ever managed to cast an enchantment that can ensnare a dwarf. They’re far too stubborn.

Nick himself looked sweaty and ill. It took me a moment to realize what it was that I was noticing. He was breathing, unlike everything else. I went to shake him awake when Romanov caught my shoulder.

“Stop,” he said. “That won’t work.”

I gave Romanov an icy stare, but he still held onto my shoulder.

“Also, damn the boy, I _told_ him if he kept ignoring his magic it would explode like this!”

From what I recalled, it was less ‘told him’ as it was ‘bitterly flinging it at his back as he walked away’. At the time, I thought that Romanov was taking Nick’s departure to stay with his father awfully personally. Now, I wondered.

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t just _ignore_ something and expect it to go away. That’s why I offered to train him enough to look after himself. Just like I said before, he’s a _menace_.”

I really couldn’t argue with that.

“Well,” I said instead. “You can tell him all this once I have him awake again. How do I do that?”

At this, Romanov’s expression shifted from annoyance to sardonic amusement. “To wake him up? Wake the princess up. To do that, you’ll have to enter their dream and get him to hurry up and kiss her, and to do _that_ ...you’ll have to kiss him.”

“What?!”

“Don’t you read stories, girl?”

“That’s to wake royals.”

Romanov’s amusement became even more sardonic, if such a thing were possible. “Listen to the spell, girl. No one is waking up until she does, but whoever cast this one was sloppy. Excess magic all over the place. Just _think_ of what you want to do and it’ll happen.”

It made sense, I supposed. He was a sleeping royal, and the spell on everything didn’t seem to care where you were from, just how noble your blood was. I could feel it tug on me a little, and my connections aren’t anything to write home about, or at least the type of connections that matter to this type of spell. I suppose it wasn’t really Nick’s fault he was born into the family he was, and I had to rescue him from a poorly cast spell. If that meant that I had to kiss someone I hadn’t seen in a year, all the while trying to concentrate on entering a dream, so that I could give him a good kick up the rear and tell him to get on with things, then that was what I would do. That didn’t mean I had to _like_ it.

Kissing Nick was a forgettable experience. I can tell you that I didn’t expect my first kiss to be kissing an unconscious man, especially tasting second hand his own vomit.

“ _Oh_ ,” I said. Romanov tells me that I went into a trance at this point, but from what I recall, I blinked and opened my eyes inside a castle.

“Right,” I said. “She’s a _sleeping_ princess, so they’d put her on the top floor, near a window, so that her prince can come in through the window from up the thorns.”

  _Nick_  


The problem with castles is that there are far too many stairs. I was sure that there was some kind of magic I could use to appear at the top of them, but unfortunately I hadn’t learned that yet. So instead, I arrived in this princess’ rooms, huffing and puffing, and convinced that my calf muscles were about to snap in half.

Then I stopped and stared at the princess.

She was beautiful, I supposed, with masses of blonde hair, a delicate nose, generous mouth and a body that belonged in a Renaissance painting, one of those paintings where the model is wearing no clothes and vases and mists cover all the interesting parts. But, to tell you the truth, it just left me cold. I wasn’t sure I really liked the idea of kissing some princess that I’d never met before, all because Fate or Destiny made me do it. What if she didn’t _want_ it? I had some sympathy for that. And isn’t it rude to just kiss some stranger you don’t know?

All of this thinking made my head hurt more, so I sat down and rested my head on my knees for a minute.

And that was when Roddy appeared, out of breath and very cross.

  _Roddy_  


I couldn’t _believe_ it. I finally found Nick, in the bedroom of Crown Princess Tellabeth, and he hadn’t kissed her already. Didn’t he know how important it was that he do it already?

“Nick!” I hissed. “Get on with it.”

Nick raised his head from where he had rested it on his knees. “I’m not about to kiss an unconscious girl,” he said, indignant. “There’s laws against that.”

“Oh, for --”

I’d had entirely enough of all this. “It’s an _enchantment_ , you’re _supposed_ to do it.” I huffed a breath. “I’ll do it, and then you can do it after me.”

I kissed her.

Then _she_ kissed me back. I froze, caught in the unravelling of the stasis enchantment and shock.

“Oh thank _goodness_ ,” she said as I pulled away. “I was so worried it would be a boy.”

Well, that explained a lot.

  _Nick_  


I wasn’t sure whether to be offended or intrigued at how Roddy had woken this Crown Princess Tellabeth with a kiss. I decided on intrigued and a little wistful, as the way that Tellabeth beamed at Roddy made her easily the most beautiful person I’d ever met. I could understand that; Roddy was that type of person who underneath that white-pinched anxiety was someone who captured the eye, like a wild, untamed forest. I know I wanted her to smile at _me_ the same way that she smiled at Tellabeth; relieved and triumphant.

Unfortunately, it’s not enough to just kiss the girl. After the stasis spell was undone, Roddy still had to wake _me_ up. She didn’t use a kiss for it, instead shaking me awake and then making faces as I mumbled and stumbled my way through the rest of the morning.

“Why didn’t you kiss _me_ awake?” I asked when I was able to speak coherently. “Wouldn’t that have worked?”

Romanov snorted. “Boy, how do you think she was in your dream in the first place?”

 _Oh._ I looked over at Roddy, whose expression was equal parts frustrated and embarrassed. “Thank you,” I said. I tried for cool and collected. I wasn’t that successful.

“Happy birthday,” she said in reply.

“What?”

“It’s your birthday.”

Later on, when I was able to find a calendar, it was my birthday. I was oddly touched that she knew what day my birthday was on, as I hadn’t told her.

So, for my birthday I got a kiss from the girl I’ve had a crush on since I was fourteen and lessons from Romanov. Didn’t I mention those? It wasn’t as if I had a choice in the matter. As it turned out, magic _will_ be used whether you use it or not, and I had an awful lot of it that wanted to be used. If I didn’t learn how to use it when I wanted, it would learn to use _me_.

“And I don’t want to clean up your messes,” Romanov said. “You couldn’t afford my rates.”

That was his way of saying that he was concerned. Besides, Roddy said she’d come and visit to make sure that Romanov was treating me properly. But for the meantime, I had to return home and clean up my mess with Dad.

“Sorry, Dad,” I said, as I came back home. “I’ll put the rubbish out next time.”

Dad, who looked like he had aged another five years in the days I’d been away, just got up and hugged me.

It was the nicest birthday I’d ever had.


End file.
